The most recent winner for Recruit Georgia’s weekly top play is George Walton Academy’s Darius Barnum. The powerful 2019 running back made a tremendous run, where his elite quickness and balance were on full display.
Barnum took the hand off on the 45 yard line, juked a defender out of his shoes, then split two more, and for good measure made a great cut back on the sideline before being pushed into the endzone for the score. It was truly an amazing play and deservedly the winner for Week 2’s top play.
We caught up with the George Walton Academy junior earlier this week, and he was able to shed some light on what he did to prepare this season.
“I feel like I had a very productive offseason. I worked on some key aspects of my game such as explosion and overall speed.” Barnum continued, “I feel like I improved the most in translating my weight room power to explosiveness on the field.”
Prior to this season Barnum had been at Brookwood, but transferred over to George Walton Academy over the summer. His sophomore season he got some valuable reps with the varsity, where he really began to develop and hone his skills.
“I feel my biggest strength is my vision and my ability to read the linebackers and see the holes as they open up which gives me an upper hand as a running back.”
Barnum (5’5″ 175 lbs) has always displayed a lot of patience and vision when running the football, which certainly explains a lot about who he models his game after. “I model my game after Le’Veon Bell from the Pittsburgh Steelers. He has the best vision and moves in the game and plays with a chip on his shoulder. I feel like that’s what it’s going to take if I want to play at the next level.”
Barnum has no fall visits yet planned, and would like to branch out to more college programs, but right now he is fully in-grained into his high school football season. Over the last 6 months he has visited several colleges.
“During the spring I visited The University of Tennessee with my 7v7 team. After that I was really in ‘camp season’ and hit multiple colleges such as Kennesaw State, Reinhardt, Mercer, Lagrange, and Virgina Union.”
We certainly believe more colleges will be in contact with Barnum, especially if he continues to make electrifying plays like he did the other weekend against Social Circle. He has a compact body, but has worked hard in the weight room, and is still making major improvements on his top-end speed. Barnum is especially effective catching the ball out of the backfield, and can disappear from the defense on screen plays.
For the last question we asked Barnum what makes playing on Friday nights so special. He promptly responded, “My favorite part about the game is running through the banner on Friday nights knowing you have teammates depending on you and vice versa. It’s a level of brotherhood that just cannot be beaten.”
Luckily for Barnum he’ll have another +18 games to experience these memorable life-changing moments, and those memories should continue into college. If you are interested in recruiting Darius Barnum, please click HERE to visit his Recruit Georgia profile. Liked reading this story, find more in the future by liking our Facebook page!
Awesome! Looking for great things from this young man!